This Sophisticated House Is Surprisingly Kid-Friendly

“It’s an elusive color,” says Virginia-based designer Barry Dixon of the blush on the walls of the living room in this Washington, D.C., house. “A pale terracotta or a faded brick color, a pale clay. Everyone looks beautiful in that room.” The color, Cochin Shell, isn’t a vestige of the 1970s, from when the house was built; Dixon created it for his line at C2 Paint, and it’s matched exactly to the pigment of an egg laid by a heritage-breed hen on his farm in Virginia.

A room awash in rosé might be a leap for some clients, but the designer had a pretty good hunch this family would go for it. He’d given them an even more vibrantly pink living room in the past. “They were on board with it right away,” he says. Dixon—who also designs fabrics for Vervain, furniture and accessories for Arteriors, upholstery for Tomlinson, and much more—first worked with the family years ago, when they had one toddler son and another son on the way. (Their previous row house on Capitol Hill appeared on the September 2011 cover of House Beautiful.)

“Find wonderful things that you love, and no matter where you move, they’ll find their place.”

Most of the furniture and fixtures traveled to the new space. “We used fabrics that we knew would stand the test of time,” he says. “We did not have to reupholster a single thing from the home we did for them eight years ago.” Two things have changed: The family gained a third son, and, finally, a daughter. Enter a very pink bedroom that is magically unlike the pink living room, due to a cooler undertone (along with heart pillows and an abundance of stuffed animals). “It’s a girlier pink, sort of frothier,” he says, “a color we call Belle’s Nose,” which is another of his C2 paints. “Belle is one of my goats at the barn, and her nose is exactly that shade of pink.”

Dixon found Jean Baptiste’s Geometric 3 series at Natural Curiosities in California. "The owner will reproduce old designs—in this case, old tile drawings for floors—on recycled pulp paper," explains the designer, who framed them in acrylic shadow boxes that won’t shatter if they got knocked into by a kid. Diego Grande Classical Perching Bird pendant and Madeline mirrored sconce, Visual Comfort. Orange chair, vintage. Spool Stool, House Eclectic (now closed).

Luke White

Color is often a jumping-off point for Dixon. “These clients do like color and want color. But if we have a room that’s saturated with it, then the room next to it will be a bit of a palate cleanser,” he explains. Rooms with bright walls get more neutral furnishings, while rooms with pale walls (often doused in C2’s Drabware) have hot spikes on the furniture, like the Hermès orange chairs in the family room. Further rules of color theory apply. “I wouldn’t use blues in, say, a dining room, because it’s not really a color that stimulates appetite,” he says. “As I go up in a house, skyward, we use more blues. I’ll put blue in a bedroom simply because it is a serene color to fall asleep in.”

Indeed, a soothing cornflower appears in the master bedroom, a color called Well Water, while one son’s room is in Approaching Storm, both by C2. “He loves camping, so we did these canopies—almost like tent flaps—above his bed, which absorb sound and define the bedroom area,” Dixon says. While the kids’ rooms reflect their current personalities (another son’s room is a smoky amethyst color, inspired by his rock collection—check it out on house­beautiful.com), they are built to last. “I think the shell and the base of furnishings should grow with them. You can replace the daughter’s little heart pillows with more serious pillows as she gets older,” Dixon says. Already, the design has proved its longevity: The artwork, ottoman, and drapes in the daughter’s room were all used in the family’s previous formal living room.

“It really is about the mix,” he says. “If you mix old with new, midcentury modern with Colonial, futuristic chrome tables with old French chairs, you hit a point where everything is timeless.”

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